


We’re From Chicago

by TheLandShark



Series: Stories of Blaseball [1]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLandShark/pseuds/TheLandShark
Summary: When you participate in the cultural event of blaseball, you eventually choose a team.But where are you from?This is one possible answer.
Series: Stories of Blaseball [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871161
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: We Are Fanwork Creators





	We’re From Chicago

**Author's Note:**

> I had only been participating in the cultural event of blaseball for about a day, and in among the Chicago Firefighters fans for less, when I was hit with a burning desire to make something.  
> So I wrote. I stayed up until 3 or 4 am (I don't remember which), writing non-stop. This had to be out. It had to be realised.  
> I originally posted it in a Google doc, but for ease of access and to encourage other writers in the blaseball fandom, I've posted here.  
> Someone even made an audio reading of it, and I love that to bits.  
> But regardless:  
> I am individually love blaseball. And I'm from Chicago.  
> I was born in Leeds, and live in Glasgow, but I'm from Chicago.  
> Where are you from?

It started this way for you. It starts similarly for many of us. It starts differently for others of us.

You were born, like many outside the sport who come to love it, in a hospital. Where that hospital is matters to you.

You were raised in a home. _What_ that home is doesn’t matter, because to you it is walls and ceilings and floors that are your territory, and within them, you hope you are safe. _Where_ that home is, _does_ matter.

It is in a place. A town. A city. That place is yours. It’s where you’re from.

“Where are you from?” you are asked, and you give the answer readily. You were taught to be polite, and it’s an answer that you know.

Time passes. You grow. You learn. You change. You feel. You explore. You try.

You do all of this and more in the place you are from.

As all do.

In time, you learn of the great sport, and are hooked. Every day you hurry home to sit with your family, your mother and father and siblings, if you have them, by the radio or television or computer or Goggles or phone to experience blaseball.

You love it.

A team in maroon and orange with bits of yellow is one that you particularly enjoy.

After a few weeks, you come into the room where you gather with your family for blaseball, but your family are waiting for you.

Your siblings, if you have them, either stare at you or, when your gaze meets theirs, they look away, almost in shame. Your mother’s smile is happy, but her eyes are pleading and desperate. Your father cannot bring himself to smile. He is forcing his jaw to remain closed, facial muscles visibly straining as he clenches. He grips onto a book in his hand labelled ‘Teams’, his knuckles white and hands shaking.

This is new to you.

“So,” says your mother, after too long a silence, “what’s your favourite team, honey?”

You think for a moment.

There is a team in maroon and orange with bits of yellow that has captured your heart, and something has begun to burn there, churning and invigorating and uplifting.

You know your answer.

“Well, I really like The Chicago Firefighters.”

The stillness that follows leads you to believe you have chosen wrong, and in a way, you have. Your family knows this.

Then, distantly, a siren begins to sound.

Your siblings, if you have them, leave the room. They do not look at you ever again.

Your mother and father begin to cry. Your mother’s smile widens, exposing all of the teeth and gums she has to offer. Your father’s grip on the book tightens. Tears drop to the floor in unison as the pages in the book begin to rip from their binding and crumple in your father’s hands.

The siren gets slowly louder.

“That’s great, honey. Good for you.”

There is something awful in the voices of your parents as they repeat this, but something proud too, as if they are wrestling with two thoughts that should not but nonetheless do coexist. As if they are fighting something, or as if something is fighting them.

You experience blaseball alone that day.

The siren grows louder.

When it is time for bed, your bedroom door is open, and your parents stand by your bed. All the drawers in your room are empty, and the bed has been stripped of its sheets. Between them are a series of suitcases.

The siren is louder.

“You can’t stay here,” says your father, as your mother takes the cases outside.

“Why not?” you ask.

The siren is blaring now.

Your father’s eyes are wide with urgency: “Because you’re not—“

Around the corner, a horn calls, and tires screech as they carry a fire truck at blistering speed. It slows abruptly, coming to a halt in front of the three of you: you, your father, and your mother.

The siren stops.

The lettering on the side reads ‘Chicago Fire Department’.

One of the doors opens on the hulking red machine, and someone steps out in heavy fire fighting garb. Their helmet is vivid and yellow. Their face is smeared and dirty. Their eyes are hard and purposeful. Their badge reads ‘Captain’.

Another exits and takes the cases. You do not see their face behind the dark mask they wear, their visor only a black screen, behind which you swear that for a moment you see flames dancing, and eyes within them, white-hot and searing, before they are gone and only the visor remains. Their badge also reads ‘Captain’.

Your cases are placed on the back seats of the cabin, and your parents hold you in goodbye, a word whispered to you many times in their embrace in this moment, and they have to be pried from you, but you do not understand. Not at first.

The first firefighter looks down at you.

“Where are you from?” they asks.

 _Oh,_ you think to yourself, _that’s easy._

“I’m from—“

And the word stops in your mouth.

Your tongue freezes. Your jaw seizes. Your teeth ache. You try to answer again, but again there is the freeze, the seize, and the ache.

The firefighter looks back to your parents.

“The fight has begun for this one,” they says, before they opens the door to an empty back seat and motion for you to enter.

You look back at your parents, as they hold one another, leaning on each other in grief and pride. They are both weeping. They are both grinning. 

You do not stop looking at them, even as the truck begins to drive away, and it rounds the corner, and they are out of sight.

You sit back in your chair, and wait.

The drive is long, and the cabin is humid. Eventually, you sleep. Eventually, food and drink are passed to you. A box of sandwiches and a flask of water.

You consume them. It does not occur to you to stop as the plastic of the box bends to the strength of your jaw and the metal of the flask begins to pool into your mouth.

The drive continues. It continues for hours, and time becomes briefly lost to you.

Then, the humidity rises. You look outside, and you see them.

There are flames everywhere. There is only the road you are on inside the truck, and about three feet of dirt, and then flames as far and as high as the eye can see. The wisps of light and heat dance and twirl before you as the truck continues to speed along. Over the sound of the engine, you hear a crinkling, cracking sound, as the fires rage on.

“Where are you from?”

You look to where the question came from. The first firefighter has turned around in their seat and is facing you directly.

“Where are you from?” they asks again.

The sound of the fire roars.

You do not look away.

“I’m from Chicago.”

The words are both yours and not yours, tumbling out of your mouth like loose stones over a waterfall. It felt odd for you to say them, but also correct. As if Chicago belonged there now, where somewhere else once was.

The face of the firefighter remains firm, but the head nods.

“As are we all,” the mouth says. “Now, hold out your hand.”

You do so, and a badge is removed from a compartment and pressed into your palm.

You look at it, and it’s one word.

‘Captain’. 

You look from the badge back outside, and the flames are gone. Now, there is a city, and it is not the one you were born in, or the one where your home could be found, but it is the one you are from. The buildings reach high into the sky and traffic mills about, as with any city, but in the distant skyline, vast gouts of flame lick over the top of the horizon.

The firefighter follows your gaze, and looks to that horizon too.

“You know what you must do now, right?” they asks.

You nod.

“There are fires in the world,” they continues. “Some are started to burn down buildings. Some are started to burn up people. Some are started for reasons or purposes that you never find out. Some of them are literal. Some of them are not. And it is your job to fight them now.

"You have to. You’re from Chicago.”

They looks back to you.

“But you will come to realise that you aren’t alone. We who came before you stand by you. Those who come after you stand by you. We’re from Chicago, too.”

Despite yourself, you find yourself smiling at the thought of this community, this new family of sorts. _We are in this fight together,_ you realise. _We are all from Chicago._

The firefighter turns back to face forward, and flicks on a radio. It’s time for blaseball, after all, and your team are playing.

And they’re from Chicago.


End file.
